1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for accessing digital files over communications networks, and more particularly to systems and methods that provide real-time, secure searching, management and access to multimedia information files over such networks.
2. Related Art
In the World Wide Web (WWW) environment, a set of protocols are used to allow a user to locate specific pieces of information (commonly referred to as “Web pages”) and to request their transmission to the user's workstation. A client program executing locally on the user's machine (e.g., a personal computer (PC)) known as a Web browser facilitates such request and allows the requested information to be displayed on the user's screen in a window.
On the WWW, every piece of information (Web pages, files and the like) is uniquely identified by a Universal Resource Locator (URL) which has four main parts: (1) the Internet address of the Web server machine hosting the information (also known as the IP address of the server machine); (2) the port where the Web server software process can be found (the port number usually defaults to the number 80); (3) the name of the directory where the page resides on the Web server machine; and (4) the name and type of the file containing the information.
In the above-described environment, the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is used during communications between the user and the WWW server. HTTP runs over the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), which are all standard Internet protocols. Typically, the communication model employed in the Internet and the WWW is that the client and server machines use a single full duplex link to exchange data as well as commands and responses necessary to exchange the actual data.
In all cases, the information is transmitted to the client at a data rate which cannot exceed the bandwidth of the full duplex link between the Web server and client machines. Typically, this is limited to a range from a few kilobits per second (kbps) to a few megabits per second (Mbps). In most cases, however, client machines are not connected to Web servers over a high bandwidth link. Therefore, communication of large multimedia (e.g., text, graphics, sound, voice and video) files over the Internet is a time-consuming process. Due to the long transmission times, clients do not typically request that Web servers transmit large files over such slow links. Additionally, control of copyrighted multimedia files (i.e., copyrighted music or movies) when they are allowed to be downloaded over the Internet, is problematic. That is, owners of such copyrighted material are not assured of receiving compensation for their works from the public's Internet downloading activities.
Therefore, given the above, what is needed is a system, method and computer program product for providing real-time, secure access to digital multimedia files over communications networks (e.g., the public Internet or an intranet). The system, method and computer program product should allow text and HTTP screens to be transmitted over any speed link, and a plug-in player on the client side of the link resolves the selection and use of a multimedia file already resident on local storage. The system, method and computer program product should also ensure that, without the plug-in player, the location and use of the multimedia files resident on the local storage is difficult to effect.